The City of Victoria should do more research before implementing its plan to replace ticket-writing Commissionaires with in-house 鈥減arking ambassadors.鈥�
Complaining about parking is as much a part of Victoria鈥檚 character as hanging flower baskets and the legislature buildings. We want to be like characters in movies, who find parking spots right in front of their destinations every time. We get miffed if we have to walk a block or two.
Parking here has generally been plentiful, inexpensive and easy to find, especially compared to other cities, but something good can always be made better. The city has done that, not with massive changes, but incrementally. Last year, the parkade rate was lowered to $2 from $2.25 an hour, with the first hour free, as is parking after 6 p.m. The result has been a 70 per cent increase in parkade use over the past year.
The city also introduced an app that allows drivers to pay for on-street spots using a smartphone or tablet. The ParkVictoria mobile system sends a text message or pop-up note to let people know their parking time is about to expire.
With the on-street pay stations, motorists do not need to return to where they bought the time to plug the meter when the time runs out 鈥� it can be done at any station. The new app added another layer of convenience 鈥� you can buy more time with your phone wherever you are. And if you don鈥檛 use it all, you get money back.
But no amount of technology or changes in regulations will prevent parking tickets. People forget, become distracted or are delayed, and the meter expires. It鈥檚 not much fun to get a ticket, but it鈥檚 the result of personal action or inaction, not the fault of the regulatory body or the people who write the tickets.
Still, it鈥檚 especially frustrating to rush back to your car to find a uniformed person writing a ticket mere minutes after the time has run out. It鈥檚 tempting to think the parking enforcers hover, vulture-like, waiting for the meter to tick its last tick so they can fill their quota of tickets, even though that鈥檚 not the reality.
Now the city wants to ease that pain. It is dropping its contract with the Corps of Commissionaires, which has provided Victoria鈥檚 parking police. It will replace Commissionaires with city-employed, unionized 鈥減arking ambassadors,鈥� for whom writing tickets will represent only a fraction of the job, according to Mayor Lisa Helps.
Does that mean the Commissionaires were under-employed? Or does this signal more leniency with parking tickets and will it encourage a casual attitude about paying for parking time? What will be the effect on city parking revenues (now about $16 million a year)?
Helps says the kinder, gentler service will cost the same as the Commissionaires, 鈥渕aybe a little bit more.鈥� How much more?
As unionized employees, the parking ambassadors will be part of negotiations for pay increases 鈥� has that been figured into the calculations?
The not-for-profit Corps of Commissionaires focuses on hiring veterans. Does this mean fewer jobs for vets?
It鈥檚 an interesting idea to train parking-enforcement officers in customer service, to add, as Helps says, 鈥渢o the downtown viability and vibrancy.鈥� And why not? Tourists go home from sa国际传媒 with photos of them posing with red-coated Mounties, or from London with shots of helmeted bobbies.
But the concept needs fleshing out and more detailed calculations. Parking tickets are a necessary evil if downtown traffic is to be regulated, and warm, fuzzy customer service isn鈥檛 likely to change that.
Here鈥檚 your parking ticket. Please come again.
